Supreme Court Defines Disability

Story By Dan Ackman from Forbes.com:

In late 1996, an auto assembly-line worker, citing pain and inflammation in her shoulders and neck, stopped showing up for work, and her employer, Toyota Motor , fired her. Yesterday, the United States Supreme Court indicated the employer's action was legal, despite the employee's claim that she was disabled and therefore entitled to a different, less-taxing position.

The Supreme Court's unanimous decision is seen as a victory for employers because it allows them some leeway in determining what special treatment they are required to extend to workers who suffer partial physical disabilities such as carpal tunnel syndrome. But the court left for another day deciding on whether a person who can do part of her job might be too disabled to do the rest of it.

The case arose under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), a 1990 law that has been vexing courts with the question of determining whose pain is a "disability" and should be afforded "reasonable accommodations."

On one side is the pure slacker, an employee who functions well in life generally, but who claims pains or injury that prevents or inhibits performance. On the other side is the worker bee who suffers from a physical ailment, and who cannot do one job, but who seems eager and able to do another.

Disability under the ADA, the Supreme Court ruled, cannot be measured solely on the ability to do tasks on the job. To be "disabled" means the worker must also be unable to perform "activities that are of central importance to most people's daily lives, such as walking, seeing and hearing."

The employee in question, Ella Williams, now 42, fell somewhere in the middle of the slacker-worker bee continuum. She started work at Toyota's Georgetown, Ky., plant in 1990. The use of pneumatic tools eventually caused pain in her hands, wrists, and arms--a form of carpal tunnel syndrome.

Her own doctor placed her on permanent work restrictions that precluded her from lifting heavy weights and engaging in constant flexing of her wrists or elbows. Toyota accommodated her by assigning her a different job. Nonetheless, she missed some work for medical leave, and eventually filed a claim under the Kentucky Workers Compensation Act. She and Toyota settled and she retuned to work.

The fix did not last, though, and she sued her employer under the ADA. As a result, Toyota gave her a new job as a quality-control inspector. During the fall of 1996, Toyota added to her duties along with other quality inspectors. Now Williams had to wipe cars with oil, which required her to hold her hands and arms at about shoulder height for several hours at a time.

This wiping caused her pain in her neck and shoulders, due to a form of tendonitis. Toyota said she could do other parts of the job that did not include wiping. But soon she started missing work altogether, apparently under her own doctor's order that restricted her from work of any kind. At that point, Toyota fired her.

The federal district court threw the case out, saying that Williams could work despite her impairment in some "major life activities," such as lifting. An appeals court sided with Williams, saying the issue was whether she was able to perform without "substantial limitation" the manual activities of her particular job, such as gripping tools and working with arms elevated and outstretched.

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote for a unanimous court, "The central inquiry must be whether the claimant is unable to perform the variety of tasks central to most people's daily lives," not just a particular job. Williams could perform household chores and could take care of her personal hygiene.

That she could not perform certain manual tasks related to her job did not make her disabled. It was not, therefore, Toyota's obligation to find her a new assignment.

The ADA is known for requiring wheelchair ramps and other accommodations at public buildings. But it also bans "discrimination" against the disabled on the job and elsewhere. In its decision, the court noted that in passing the ADA, Congress referred to 43 million Americans with physical or mental disabilities. The number would have been even higher, the court wrote, "if Congress intended everyone with a physical impairment that precluded the performance of some isolated, unimportant or particularly difficult manual task to qualify as disabled."

Along with other recent decisions, the ruling will, advocates for the disabled say, make it harder for allegedly disabled workers to win their cases.

In the past, the Supreme Court refused to decide whether "working could be a major life activity." Yesterday, it continued to refuse to decide "this difficult question." Instead it ruled on the narrow question of what evidence should be considered in an ADA case, and specifically refused to look beyond it.

Because the court decided to avoid a major function of its job--deciding not just one case but giving real guidance for future cases--the uncertainty about the ADA will continue.